He needed rest. The snow had stopped and the cloud cleared and some light came from a sliver of moon. Carefully, he slumped down on a thick carpet of pine needles. He had some cover from the trees and, with his left hand, he swept pine needles across his legs and torso in an attempt at concealment. All he could hope was that he would not be seen and that the hunt would die away, but the darkness would not help him if they came close to him with their torches and dog. Unlike him, they would know these woods intimately. His chances were slender.

There was another factor, though: fear. Few of the men in SS uniform could be true battle-hardened soldiers. At first sight they had been alarming, but closer inspection showed that many were grey-haired men or just boys. Also, the more they fanned out into the depths of the woods, the thinner their lines became. How much courage did they have alone in a dark forest, faced with a desperate gunman?

He sensed soft footfalls, saw the flickering glow of a torch and his body tensed. The throb of excruciating pain in his right arm momentarily forgotten, his left hand slid towards the dagger in his belt. He couldn’t afford to take another gunshot, for it would be a certain giveaway of his location.

The light of the torch shifted, guttering and casting strange shapes through the branches. Then, at last, it intensified. Heck’s eyes were wide open and he was staring straight into the muzzle of a short carbine no more than two feet from his face.

Incongruously, he felt like laughing. The weapon looked as though it had been old when the Great War began. Above the barrel, he met the torchlit eyes of the man with his finger on the trigger – a man who seemed as ancient as his gun. His peasant features were worn and thick from a surfeit of sausage fat, his eyes were hooded and blank; a lifetime of slaughter on the battlefield and in the farmyard left a man without qualms or sensitivity. To this old farmer and soldier, the shooting of a man was no more remarkable than the wringing of a fowl’s neck or the bayonetting of a Tommy in the trenches.

Heck raised himself into a sitting position and put his one good arm out above his head in surrender, the knife dropping from his grasp. Waiting to die, he heard a click and recoiled. But he wasn’t dead; the carbine had misfired. Another click.

He didn’t wait for a third click. The dagger was back in his left hand and he lunged upwards, thrusting the blade deep into the old soldier’s navel. A look of astonishment crossed the old man’s wrinkled brow.